With the increased interest in various sports, more and more of the traditional spring and summer sports are being undertaken during the colder fall and winter months. This calls for additional equipment, such as warm clothing, and especially gloves for protecting the hands while allowing participation in the sporting activity. A specific example is cold weather fishing which requires the fishing line to slide along one's finger when retrieving the fishing line after a cast. In archery, when releasing the bowstring, the bowstring should easily slide along the index finger, middle finger and ring finger for proper release. When hunting with a gun, the index finger should slide smoothly into the trigger housing to avoid misfiring. Thus, in these cases, it is highly advantageous to use a pair of gloves which provide a firm grip, yet also provide a smooth surface having a low coefficient of friction for performing a specific function, such as casting, handling fishing lines, releasing a bowstring, or shooting a gun. Similar requirements are found in other sports or commercial activities.
Numerous cold weather gloves are known in the prior art. However, these cold weather gloves have several disadvantages. For example, many of them are formed of a thick fabric, and thus, they do not provide sufficient gripping power. In addition, many of these prior art gloves do not provide any means for permitting a relative sliding movement of the device being used against the outer surface of the glove. Moreover, the prior art gloves which have a surface of low coefficient of friction fail to provide an opposing finger or thumb with a surface of high coefficient of friction, which can be used with the finger or thumb of low coefficient of friction to permit the user to grasp and release objects with more precision and sensitivity.
An example of the prior art is U.S. Pat. No. 4,408,358 to Swan which discloses a glove formed of an outer rubber layer of closed cell neoprene foam and an inner layer of nylon fabric. This glove requires cutting off the tips of the thumb and index finger of the glove to provide the desired sliding and gripping actions. Other examples of these prior art gloves are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 919,406 to Warren; 2,728,082 to Slimovitz; 3,255,461 to Bullock; 3,643,386 to Grzyll; 4,064,563 to Stokes; 4,071,913 to Rector; 4,094,014 to Schroeder; 4,302,851 to Adair; and 4,507,807 to Karkanen.